Hello hello
Friends, strangers, family
You can be one of these
Or all of them
But hello hello
To a greeting or nothing
I'll still say
Hello hello

the asteroid hit the earth so long ago that
                                                             i do not remember a time before.  
(the bones of dinosaurs do not remember a time before they were
petrified into brittle and fragile memories; the moon does not recall
who she was before she got stuck in the earth’s orbit; uranus knows
nothing of how he came to spin on his side.)

you could stick your hand through
any of the gas giants and find
                                                          your whole body
                                                           slidi­ng through.  
this same theory can be applied to my skin.  i have very little gravity,
or at least it feels that way most days.

maybe it depends on how you look at it:
one way is perfect, and the other all wrong.  the woman in the casket could either be sleeping or dead.  she could either be a stranger or my mother.  the head or the tail.  the light or the dark.  the two sides of the moon.  the comet striking through the night sky.  the interdimensional toll could refuse to let you through.  the cult could accept or deny your entry request.  there is one and there is the other.  the upside down.  the rightside up.  the parallel universe.  the evil twin.  it’s fresh and then it’s rotten.  this could either hurt a lot or a little.  it depends on how much you let in: how willing you are to bend to the emotional blow.

science says that the human body tends to
                                                            forget physical pain as a survival tactic.
but science says jack **** about emotional pain.

so am i living?  or am i just existing?
     the difference is six feet deep.

I’m thinking of the faded checkered pattern that has been
smoothed away by time on the dark cloth seats of a Nissan Pathfinder
                                          driving down Ryan Road on a hot day in June.
My mother, in the front seat, singing along to a Spice Girls cassette.  

I’m thinking: red, plastic, crab-shaped sandbox and
                                      McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.  
I’m thinking: light princess pink, seafoam green, and robin’s egg blue.  
I’m thinking of a framed cheetah cross stitch, hanging on the wall of what
                                      used to be our bedroom at my grandparent’s house.
I’m thinking: Barbie doll houses and Hot Wheels and a cul-de-sac at
                                                                ­                     the end of the street.  

The sweet smell of cigar smoke.  The ice cold splash of the garden hose.  The pop of a bubble.  The sting of soap in the eye.  Dreams by The Cranberries.  As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys.  A HelloKitty boombox slowly spitting out vapor when the deck builders hit a power line while digging.  The deer in the backyard looking for corn.  The faded wood of a playset that was never really played on.

My father: sitting alone on a splintered bench by the firepit at the edge of the woods, empty beer cans at his feet, chain smoking cigarettes, and humming along to a song that is stuck—forever stuck—on the tip of my tongue.
I do not know if this happened.  I cannot ask him.  
(I’m not sure if I would want to ask him.)  
But I can make an educated inference that that line of
fiction is really nonfiction.  
A memory that feels like a phantom limb.  
                            Sounds like the sharp crinkle of static.  
                                                     Co­vered in a gossamer, dreamlike haze.  

There is a distinct otherness to this memory, to who
                                     I think I was before the trauma.  
We are two different people.  A yin and a yang.  A day and a night.  
The hermit crab is soft beneath its hard shell.
The asbestos is not apparent within the insulation.  
You cannot see the lead in the paint.
The mold inside the fruit.

No matter how much your mother scold
it's only for your good
No matter how much your father shout
he's testing you and never leaves  doubt
No matter how much your brother hates
he knows you'll never say him goodbyes
No matter how much your doggy irritates
he wants you to be his hero...

i see myself -
unshaven and distraught, at peace with who i am and despaired by a world i saw coming but couldn't prepare for.
i see myself -
sitting in the old house, civil war ghosts whispering through the cracks in the dry red clay. sherman burned this town once and now i get to watch the sun do it again.
i see myself -
the hedges are overgrown and i never stopped smoking cigarettes. the shadows on the walls are mapped out, a mimicry of life in an empty heirloom.
i see myself -
head in my hands thinking about history. The Last Gilded Age. The Second Gilded Age. what good are comparisons if no one's left to draw them? how does the past make room in a world already strangled by its present?
i choke back -
the same addiction that made geraldine shoot herself. it occurs to me that i am probably the last person alive to remember geraldine ever existed. i think that's what drew me to history - i've always had the past living inside me. there's a whole family tree intertwined with my ribcage, like kudzu over tarred lungs.
i fill my -
flask with weedkiller. i inherit an open wound. i try to find my place in a history that no one will ever read.

A team of four - or more than two
Tappy children waddle by -
To see the lake - with a loon, with
Their mother - looking nigh:

Their funny games, which all they play
Throughout the night of orange suns;
Of tannéd eyes the streetlights flay
And run on home would all of them:

Then father comes and takes away
To other places in a night;
All gone the children, gone today -
Perhaps they'll come another time.

For as long as I can remember,
the women of my family have lived
in hunger like hulking tigers in a cramped cage.
Love is quickly used up, its quality fading
from golden light into grainy shadows
flicked haphazardly across God’s great canvas.
After Love departs, nothing remains but
the splinters where we have torn away limbs
and dug holes in search of that light again,
the flecks of gold streaked through our hair,
the ones that know better than revisit our homes.
When we give up, we sit in our drab backyards
to watch the sun sink over a police state
masquerading as the ultimate state of grace.
We tuck our freedoms into bed, kiss our sacred rights
goodnight in case we never get the chance
to lead by the hand into the light of day,
and sneak back down to the kitchen for one last snack,
maybe two. Maybe more, maybe our mouths
wait in secret to transform into one bottomless pit
as we reach with every breath we take for something
we have always known and long since learned
we’ll never be able to grasp in our earthly fingers.